1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bread conveying apparatus for conveying the bread and to a bread slicing apparatus comprising the bread carrying apparatus. In particular, the present invention relates to a bread conveying apparatus that can feed out the bread in appropriate timing regardless of the size of the bread while keeping in constant the conveying speed of a driving system such as an endless revolving member for conveying the bread, and a bread slicing apparatus comprising such the bread carrying apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Bread slicing apparatuses for slicing the loaf bread have been conventionally used. For example, JP Patent Application Laid Open No. 11-90890 discloses a loaf bread slicer. The loaf bread slicer comprises a plurality of endless blades that are wound around a pair of drums and revolved, and the endless blades are disposed spaced apart from each other by a predetermined distance so as to slice the loaf bread in a predetermined thickness. Further, in order to supply the loaf bread to the loaf bread slicer, there is provided a loaf bread conveyer unit comprising a conveyer (an endless revolving member) and the like. The loaf bread conveying unit introduces a three-loaf length of baked loaf bread into the loaf bread slicer with the baked loaf breads set in a lateral orientation, and the introduced loaf bread goes through the endless blades to be sliced in the predetermined thickness. The sliced loaf bread is conveyed to the next process by a discharge conveyer comprising a conveyer and the like.
In addition, a bread conveying apparatus such as the loaf bread conveying unit for conveying the loaf bread to the bread slicing apparatus such as the bread slicer is configured to vary the conveying speed of the bread conveying apparatus (for example, the number of loaves of bread that can be supplied per unit time) according to the slicing capacity of the bread slicing apparatus for slicing the bread that has been produced in the preceding process, or the conveying capacity of the discharge conveyer for discharging the bread that has been sliced by the bread slicing apparatus.
As mentioned above, in the conventional bread conveying apparatus for conveying the bread to the bread slicing apparatus, it is required to intermittently operate the bread conveying unit in order to control the timing of introducing the bread to the endless blades and the timing of conveying the bread sliced by the endless blades to the discharge conveyer for discharging it from the bread slicing apparatus. Therefore, it may be possible to provide control means of the bread conveying apparatus, a sensor for detecting the presence/absence of the bread close to the bread slicing apparatus and the discharge conveyer, and a control mechanism for the acceleration and deceleration of the bread conveying apparatus in response to the result detected by the sensor.
However, there are problems that such the control itself is difficult and the arrangement of the bread conveying apparatus and the bread slicing apparatus comprising such the bread conveying apparatus will be complicated.